DK64 Stop 'n' Swop connection

Basically, the gist of what we have discovered and confirmed, is that at one time in development, we can say without a doubt that Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 were meant to be stop n swopped, and we have *very* tantalising evidence. But first, we must examine the history of the Stop N Swop process.

We start the discussion with Banjo Kazooie, Rare's first Banjo game. To start off this Stop N Swop nonsense, Rare decided that upon 100% completion of the game, it would have Mumbo show you two secret eggs and an ice key in hidden, inaccessible areas ("areas that you missed"), which would be obtained and used for the next Banjo game, Banjo Tooie. After using a cheat device to moonjump, the ice key was collected, and a new menu called Stop N Swop showed up with the ice key, and could not be removed no matter what a person did. There was no released method as to how this "Stop N Swop" would be done, and the theories on the market were through the expansion pak, the small bit of N64's extra memory, a controller pak, lock-on cartridge, and/or sandcastle cheats. After a cheat device "trick" to activate all of the secret areas, we were astonished that there were six eggs, not two as previously thought. Finally, January 13th, 2001, the Rare Witch Project released sandcastle cheats via rarewitchproject.net and N64 Magazine for Banjo Kazooie, which opened up all of the 7 secret areas after a short view of the spot.

Then, Banjo Tooie was released. To everyone's disappointment, Rareware merely included 3 eggs and an ice key in Banjo Tooie, smaller than the Banjo Kazooie size, that unlocked trivial secrets in Banjo Tooie and had little if nothing to do with Banjo Kazooie's eggs other than being the same idea. It was odd, considering three eggs were missing, and did Rare really just want us to accept these as their much-hyped Stop N Swop? After long and hard examination through cheat devices of Banjo Tooie, all that could be determined was there were no additional cheats for the wall, a base egg exists in the image modifier of NTSC BT but not PAL BT, and there was no evidence anywhere of any connections to Banjo Kazooie. There's no way to know whether they actually planned something to do with Banjo Tooie or not.

There's also the small matter of Blackeye in Banjo Tooie, who is in front of pictures of Treasure Trove Cove and the Sharkfood Island Secret Pink Egg. He says that he had a Dream once, and that a bear looking like you stole his glory. Of course Dream would be the original name for Banjo Kazooie, and the bear he is referring to is Banjo. So what does this mean exactly? If you take the picture behind Banjo to be Blackeye's glory, then he is referring to Banjo stealing his pink egg in Banjo Kazooie. However, you could also take it as his glory to be taken because he was not the star in Dream for whatever reason, as a reference to a very early removed character in Banjo Kazooie (Giant?). Or perhaps it is a reference to the Treasure Chest Banjo busts in Banjo Kazooie (A pirate picture is shown in one of the rooms of MadMonster Mansion). Regardless, since you cannot actually do anything with Blackeye, can't get him his water, there's really no reason for him to be there other than to provide an extra element of intrigue as Rare likes to do.

It also appeared that Rareware was never going to release the Banjo Kazooie sandcastle cheats anyways, since almost three years later from its release on May 31, 1998 it still had not, and to this day denies or at least never will comment on the fact that the cheats have been released. This is odd, considering the hacked out Goldeneye codes were shown on Rareware's site, but perhaps it is merely a matter of pride.

Now, for the "real" discussion here. It has been almost nearly confirmed that the actual Stop N Swop method was using the small bit of the N64 Console's active memory that was held for about 30 seconds after shutoff. Rareware would implant some code in that small bit of memory that would affect the next game inserted, and as long as that next game was turned on before the 30 seconds were up, it would implement some change to the game.

But what we have discovered, is that most likely the only Stop N Swop ever implemented (or even truly envisioned), was between Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. There was always some hints of this, with early screenshots of Banjo Kazooie including a framed picture of Donkey in the select game menu, and a locker in Donkey Kong 64 with a Banjo Kazooie picture on the side. But until now...that was all that was there. The two games were developed at the same time by the same company, so this stop n swop between the two games is quite feasible. Of course there also is a picture of Conker in Banjo Kazooie...

Anyway, and now, the Rare Witch Project finally reveals concrete proof that the connection between Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 was not only conceived, but coded and possibly even tested. Read on.

The major bit of proof involves Donkey Kong 64 menu system. When the menu is opened in Donkey Kong 64, there is the text ICE KEY mixed in with all of the items, next to the nintendo coin and blueprints, and also appearing in a second spot. There was an ice key at one time in Donkey Kong 64, and almost certainly it was the same ice key of Banjo Kazooie. So what does this mean? We at the Rare Witch Project believe that the original Stop N Swop called for only an ice key: the ice key was to be swapped from Banjo Kazooie to Donkey Kong 64, in order to probably unlock some features in Donkey Kong 64. Your reward in Banjo Kazooie likely would just be the opening of the Ice Key room. We have also speculated, that the eggs in Banjo Kazooie still were there, and...may have been used to stop n swop to Banjo Tooie. While we have no proof of this, we feel that since the eggs were not intended for Donkey Kong 64 because the text just plain is not there. At the end of Banjo Kazooie they have that endings video at 100% completion with Mumbo saying that these eggs (although ice key as well) were intended for Banjo Tooie. While this is all speculation and in fact stop n swop could've and probably did go through several stages, and we have no way to know exactly what was going on, based on the evidence this is our best educated guess. And remember that Banjo Tooie did have a base egg in the NTSC image modifier, although since Stop N Swop was probably removed in BK anyways this is a moot point.

Finally, we have the kicker. After examining the sound modifier, we have found, the fanfare from Banjo Kazooie in Donkey Kong 64 (Compare fanfare from DK64 to fanfare of BK. Although most of you have heard it with Scoff N Troff, here is the unadulterated version that is from the sound modifier. The fanfare, heard upon visiting an area of a secret egg or ice key in Banjo Kazooie, had to be related to Stop N Swop. Probably upon bringing the ice key back, or going to some chamber involving the stop n swop, this brilliant music bit would be heard. Unfortunately Rare re-used this sound for Scoff N Troff, probably out of laziness to or to just intrigue us; either way, this HAD to be intended for the Stop N Swop process.

So why was Stop N Swop removed? Well, basically, it is assumed that Nintendo did not like the fact that there was no telling what this Stop N Swop could do to games other than the ones involved or even the N64 system itself on a bad bootup. Someone who tries to hot swap Banjo Kazooie and then Turok 2 perhaps could end up erasing Turok 2's saved games, causing weird N64 errors, or actually damaging the N64 itself (This can be done, a N64 gameshark that was malfunctioning nearly killed an N64 of SubDrag's, as the system would not turn on for approximately three hours). There's no clear evidence as to when in development Stop N Swop was removed (or if it actually was finished or worked), but almost undoubtably it was worked on at some point, and probably the programmers developing it were disappointed at the loss of their great project.

So what else have we done and what is left to find? Well, we have explored the 3D image modifier comprehensively of Donkey Kong 64, and while seeing some odd image modifiers, we could find nothing related to Stop N Swop. No ice key was found, but we did find several empty digits, which either means the image was removed or the image has to be unlocked to be available. We have yet to be able to examine the 2D modifier, but we are working on it, and hopefully there will be an ice key image or any other suspicious image. The sound modifier is completely explored, but the fanfare is probably all that would be there, and the warp modifier has been explored and unfortunately no secret stop n swop room has been discovered. However, if perhaps the stop n swop room was for example a subset of Crystal Caverns main map (ice for ice key, the walls looks like BK's ice?), it has probably been removed, or if it is like Banjo Kazooie, must be unlocked or else it does not show up. There's also the matter of a Donkey Kong 64 action modifier (who knows what is there), and the Donkey Kong 64 background modifier. So, we at the Rare Witch Project, will be very hard at work in the near future, working on Donkey Kong 64's 2D Image modifier and text modifier and any other thing we can come up with, and who knows, we may even find more evidence of Donkey Kong 64s Stop N Swop or at the very least some great codes.